


To Jongin, From Kyungsoo

by SooSooDyo (Phinphin)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: A story about letters, Alternate Universe - High School, Just me writing about writing, Love Confessions, M/M, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:26:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25941319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phinphin/pseuds/SooSooDyo
Summary: Every day, Kyungsoo leaves his heart in Jongin's locker in the form of a letter.
Relationships: Do Kyungsoo | D.O/Kim Jongin | Kai
Comments: 10
Kudos: 72





	To Jongin, From Kyungsoo

One by one, he pieces them together, the words he’s too afraid to say. Cut from his favourite voices, like gems coming together to create a necklace, he arranges them like flowers. They’re fresh today, but soon they’ll die, the magic having left them.

Long words, short words, commas, periods, even spaces. He gathers them all. It’s like berry picking. Some of them are ripe and sweet, and leave their stems easily, while others leave a sour taste in his mouth and an ache in the back of his throat. 

In the cover of darkness, where no one can see what he feels, he carefully lines them up. The stories he tells is about nothing in particular, and everything at the same time. The meaning isn’t up to him, he tells himself, but still, he asks the words to be kind to him, to allow themselves to be read the way he intends.

He never knows if they are, and he tells himself that is okay. It is enough to know the words are there, safely adhered to the blank page. They perch on the lines, seek protection in the corners, play hide and seek on the backside. Some huddle together for comfort, the fragile ones that he has to be ever so gentle with, and some distance themselves, the tough ones he has to wrestle into submission first.

They live their own life on the page, one beyond his control. He merely put them there. Like a mother he watches them leave him, hoping that they’ll do good, hoping they know how proud he is, hoping they’ll return one day to fill the void they left in him. 

Some words steal away more of him than others. He can feel it sometimes. He bleeds onto the page, open wounds pouring out word after word after word. He removes splinters buried deep under his skin, digging and digging until they’re finally free. He leaves stains on the page, not realizing he was even carrying them until the accident has already happened. He looks for treasure he thought he kept safe, only to realize it’s hidden on another page already set free.

He never goes to retrieve them.

That the letters fit through the narrow gap between the locker door and locker walls is a wonder each time. He feels they should be bigger than that. No matter how much they weigh, how deep they cut, how coarsely they grind against him, the letters slip through with a simple push.

The skin of his finger sink into the gap, like a mountain filling a valley. He wonders if one day, when he’s said everything he wants to say, he’ll be able to follow his words into the void. The day he’s empty, will he too grow flat like his letters. 

Who will read him when he does? Who will unfold him and discover the secrets within. Who will twist and turn him, peel back layer after layer until they finally reach that fabled message, the one he’s still not sure exists. How could it, when the words are so many, and so vast? How could they possibly fit into a message? 

What will be his message?

The thought terrifies him. What is left at the core, when it’s all peeled away? If you started with A and kept going, removing each letter and each words, what would be left? If you took away his spaces, his pauses, his stops, where would he find purchase? Without his words, he wouldn’t be. 

He hopes whoever reads him is careful. He hopes they turn each page of him carefully. He hopes they breathe him in like the scent of new books. He hopes they sort him in a carefully thought out system only they understand, one he would be honoured to be apart of.

He hopes they stain his stain with their favourite drink. He hopes his corners fray from being kept in their bag everywhere they go. He hopes they say parts of him wrong, because they’ve only ever experienced his words in writing. He wants to be shared with friends and family, treasured like a precious memory, cared for like a childhood toy.

He wants to be read.

“Excuse me.”

The words slide under his collar like ice. He turns around, clutching the letter he didn’t get to slide into the locker close to his chest. The words inside are fading with each second, growing weaker and weaker as they’re separated from their friends.

“Are you the one who’s been leaving all those letters?”

He can’t reply. He’s given all his words away, and now that he needs them the most, there are none left.

“Is that for me?” 

The letter bares a name. He has a hard time picking favourites. How could he, when taken out of context, all words seem to lose their beauty? But, maybe, just maybe, this name could be his favourite. It’s the word he wakes to, and the one he falls asleep to. It’s the one that covers him from head to toe, and is imprinted in the finest writing on his heart. It’s the one he can’t stop reading, the one he never seems to figure out. 

It’s the one his other words arrange themselves around.

He holds the letter out, fingers shaking from the strain. Far too easily the letter is plucked from his hands. The words leave him without looking back, abandon him like nothing. They settle in with their new owner like nothing, like they never belonged to anyone else. He realizes they never had. They’ve always belonged to someone else. He gathered them for someone else. He chose them for someone else. He arranged them for someone else.

They’ve always belonged to Jongin.

The words don’t return to him even after he’s left. The part of himself where he stores them is empty, a void slowly consuming him. Even the words he saved, that he still hasn’t dared to show anyone else, slip into the nothingness until he’s lost them too. He’s empty, he realizes as he drowns in the vastness of the empty page in front of him.

He tries to pick up more words, but they stubbornly refuse to leave their place. He begs them, bargains with them, orders them, but they won’t budge. They’ve already found their place, locked away in the order he always fed from. Now they elude him, doge his reach, evade his gaze, outwit his comprehension. 

He sinks through the spaces between them, slips off the rows they’re so neatly arranged on, tumbles off the pages they live on. Like a discarded receipt he crumples up.

Was he never meant to be read?

The corner of a folded paper sticks out through the crack in his locker. Like a mountain it sinks into the valley of his skin as he runs his finger over it. It stings, even before he’s opened it. The words inside haunt him. Their shape ghost through the page. Their spirit terrifies him.

He fears the meaning he’ll read into them. He fears the way it will taint the words forevermore. He fears it will undo his words, undo his world, undo him. He fears losing himself in them, like he has lost himself in so many words before. He fears never finding himself again. He fears the vastness of the white paper in front of him.

_Kyungsoo_ is placed carefully in the center of the folded up page. It hangs suspended on one side, separated from the rest of the words. Alone. He wishes he could hold it close, protect it from the possibility of every word following before or after it. 

He holds it off as long as he can, but the words inside demand to be read. They cannot go on unless he grants them their wish, and if there is one thing he fears more than words, it’s the lack of them. So he forces the paper to unfold, the words to bare themselves for him, their meaning to form in his mind.

And he smiles.

In his longing to be read, he never considered the wonder of being written.

**Author's Note:**

> Pls give me some words in return for all these words I have given you UwU


End file.
